THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 26, 2013
11
DVD NOTES
A STAR IS BORN
The German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder,
who died at the age of thirty-seven, in 1982, with
more than forty feature lms to his credit, was
one of the great cinematic prodigies, as seen in
the new boxed set "Early Fassbinder," from Cri-
terion. His rst feature, "Love Is Colder Than
Death," from 1969, wasn't an epoch-de ning
masterwork at the level of "Citizen Kane" or
"Breathless," but it brought together aspects of
those two strains of moviemaking---classic-era
Hollywood and the French New Wave---in a no-
budget gangster lm that embeds the street-level
furies and social tensions of West Germany in
cinematic mythology. In the process, he made
Munich a new movie capital.
Before turning to movies, Fassbinder founded
the Antitheatre in Munich, and the opening scenes
of his rst lm---in which he stars, as Franz, a
cantankerous young criminal---feel like theatri-
cal tableaux, with their wide, static frames and
formalized action. On location, Fassbinder dis-
plays a natural and spontaneous grasp of fram-
ing, pacing, and texture, as well as a sheer visual
ecstasy that's also rooted in the New Wave. His
gangsters aren't ripped from the headlines but
derived from other movies (witness the hench-
man who looks and dresses like Alain Delon);
though his scenes of violence are conspicuously
arti cial, they convey an authentic moral horror.
From the start, Fassbinder lmed with his
own repertory company of actors, including Han-
na Schygulla, who plays Franz's girlfriend, Jo-
hanna; their scenes of erotic gamesmanship exude
the cruelty, humiliation, and power plays that are
the director's enduring themes. His second fea-
ture, "Katzelmacher," set in and around the court-
yard of a working-class housing complex, cap-
tures, in stage-like scenes of a frontal bluntness,
the loam of economic and sexual frustration that
leads to an assault on a Greek immigrant worker
(also played by Fassbinder). In the crime dramas
"Gods of the Plague" and "The American Sol-
dier," his camera peels back layers of German
history to reveal---by way of moods and charac-
ters borrowed from American lm-noir classics---
the Weimar era and its enduring con icts.
In "Beware of a Holy Whore," from 1971---
his tenth feature in three years---Fassbinder turned
his attention to moviemaking itself, in a histri-
onic behind-the-scenes melodrama focussing on
a production crew (including the real-life action
star Eddie Constantine, playing himself) that oc-
cupies a crumbling old hotel on the coast of Spain
while waiting for the money and the lm stock
to show up. The story is a fragmented whirl of
dalliances and betrayals, brutal displays of force
and chaotically scattered ambitions. Fassbinder
plays the assistant director, who harshly keeps
things together until the shoot starts, and he de-
livers something of a displaced self-portrait in an
exquisitely choreographed long take that shows
the dissolute and cavalier director of the lm-
within-a- lm (Lou Castel) coming to life when
the shoot begins and delivering a nuanced, com-
plex, even profound plan for the day's work.
---Richard Brody
AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY
Central Park W. at 79th St. (212-769-5100)---"Whales:
Giants of the Deep." Through Jan. 5. (Open daily,
10 to 5:45.)
AMERICAN FOLK ART MUSEUM
Columbus Ave. at 66th St. (212-595-9533)---" Tra y -
lor in Motion: Wonders from New York Collec-
tions." Through Sept. 22. (Open Tuesdays through
Saturdays, noon to 7:30, and Sundays, noon to 6.)
BRONX MUSEUM
1040 Grand Concourse (718-681-6000)---"State of
Mind: New California Art Circa 1970." This ram-
bling survey attempts to de ne West Coast concep-
tualism as distinct from its counterpart on the East
Coast. A raucous unpredictability appears to be one
characteristic; where New York artists were devel-
oping rigorous systems for art-making, the sixty Los
Angeles and Bay Area artists represented here took
a more playful, irreverent approach. Paul Kos sur-
rounded a chunk of ice with eight microphones to
amplify the sound of its melting. Tom Marioni crum-
pled pieces of colored paper and threw them on the
oor, calling them "Birds in Flight." Barbara Smith
built a eld of Brobdingnagian blades of grass made
of resin that light up when they're touched. That
may sound enticing, but most of the works here
were ephemeral or performative, which means there's
a surfeit of black-and-white documentation. Through
Sept. 8th. (Open Thursdays through Sundays, 11 to
6, and Friday evenings until 8.)
DIA ART FOUNDATION AT THE FOREST
HOUSES
Tinton Ave. between 163rd and 165th Sts., the
Bronx (212-989-5566)---"Thomas Hirschhorn:
Gramsci Monument." Through Sept. 15. (Open
daily, 10 to 6.)
FRICK COLLECTION
1 E. 70th St. (212-288-0700)---"Precision and
Splendor: Clocks and Watches at the Frick Col-
lection." Through Feb. 2. (Open Tuesdays through
Saturdays, 10 to 6, and Sundays, 11 to 5.)
INTERNATIONAL CENTER OF
PHOTOGRAPHY
1133 Sixth Ave., at 43rd St. (212-857-0000)---
"A Different Kind of Order: The I.C.P. Trien-
nial." Through Sept. 8. (Open Tuesdays through
Sundays, 10 to 6, and Friday evenings until 8.)
JEWISH MUSEUM
Fifth Ave. at 92nd St. (212-423-3200)---"Jack
Goldstein x 10,000." Through Sept. 29. "Elaine
Reichek: A Postcolonial Kinderhood Revisited."
Opens Aug. 23. (Open Saturdays through Tues-
days, 11 to 5:45, Thursdays, 11 to 8, and Fri-
days, 11 to 4.)
MORGAN LIBRARY & MUSEUM
225 Madison Ave., at 36th St. (212-685-0008)---"Sub-
liming Vessel: The Drawings of Matthew Bar-
n e y." Through Sept. 2. (Open Tuesdays through
Thursdays, 10:30 to 5, Fridays, 10:30 to 9, Sat-
urdays, 10 to 6, and Sundays, 11 to 6.)
MUSEO DEL BARRIO
Fifth Ave. at 104th St. (212-831-7272)---"El
Museo's Bienal 2013: Here Is Where We Jump."
Through Jan. 4. (Open Tuesdays through Satur-
days, 11 to 6, and Sundays, 1 to 5.)
NATIONAL MUSEUM OF THE AMERICAN
INDIAN
1 Bowling Green (212-514-3700)---"Before and
After the Horizon: Anishinaabe Artists of the
Great Lakes." Through June 15. (Open daily, 10
to 5, and Thursday evenings until 8.)
NEUE GALERIE
1048 Fifth Ave., at 86th St. (212-628-6200)---"Kolo-
man Moser: Designing Modern Vienna 1897-
1907." Through Sept. 2. (Open Thursdays through
Mondays, 11 to 6.)
NEW MUSEUM
235 Bowery, at Prince St. (212-219-1222)---"Llyn
Foulkes." Through Sept. 1. "Erika Vogt: Stranger
Debris Roll Roll Roll." Through Sept. 22. "Ellen
Gallagher: Don't Axe Me." Through Sept. 15.
(Open Wednesdays through Sundays, 11 to 6,
and Thursday evenings until 9.)
STUDIO MUSEUM IN HARLEM
144 W. 125th St. (212-864-4500)---"Robert Pruitt:
Women." Twenty captivating drawings by the Texas-
based artist, all portraits, render contemporary sub-
jects in a classical, realist style. One's thoughts might
stray to the work of Barkely L. Hendricks, if not
for a surreal twist: the young women's accessories
and hair styles reference breakthroughs in science
and art. One model wears a solar panel over her
loose- tting dress like an apron; another has an
updo in the shape of Vladimir Tatlin's "Monument
to the Third International." Is Pruitt satirizing uto-
pian dreams that were never fully realized? The
works themselves are straightforward---black Conté
crayon on brown paper---and the execution is deft
and respectful, with the women often portrayed as
if in a low-angle shot, so they appear regal and even
de ant. Through Oct. 27th. "Things in Them-
selves: Steffani Jemison, Jennifer Packer, and Cullen
Washington Jr." Through Oct. 27. "Body Lan-
guage." Through Oct. 27. (Open Thursdays and Fri-
days, noon to 9, Saturdays, 10 to 6, and Sundays,
noon to 6.)
1
GALLERIES---UPTOWN
SUSANNAH RAY
The photographer, who lives in the Rockways, took
these big color pictures in the aftermath of Hurri-
cane Sandy. Destruction is the focus, but resilience
is the theme. Scenes of spectacular ruins---a red
Mini Cooper crushed beneath the uprooted board-
walk, a house that's still standing with most of its
ground oor swept away--- irt with disaster porn.
But they're balanced by more contemplative im-
ages, including interiors, still-lifes, and a group of
portraits accompanied by Jen Poyant's audio col-
lage of Rockaway residents' voices. Their stories---
of rising waters, rescued neighbors, narrow es-
capes---ground the show in vivid experience. Through
Sept. 7. (Benrubi, 41 E. 57th St. 212-888-6007.)
Short List
BRUCE DAVIDSON: Greenberg, 41 E. 57th St.
212-334-0010. Through Aug. 31. CARISSA RO-
DRIGUEZ: Front Desk Apparatus, 218 Madison
Ave. 212-300-3661. Through Sept. 6.
1
GALLERIES---CHELSEA
HERMAN LEONARD
Most of these classic black-and-white pictures by
the great jazz photographer were taken in the for-
ties and fties, when Billie Holiday, Miles Davis,
Sarah Vaughan, and Charlie Parker (all subjects here)
were in their prime. Typically, Leonard catches the
singers and musicians up close and mid-performance,
sweating and swinging, often in a haze of cigarette
smoke. When he pulls back, the scene opens up,
and you feel as if you were right there, notably in
a scene at the Downbeat Club in 1948, when Ella
Fitzgerald's audience included a delighted Duke El-
lington and Benny Goodman. Through Aug. 23.
(Mann, 525 W. 26th St. 212-989-7600.)
"DESIRE"
The photographer Jodie Vicenta Jacobson has put
together a whip-smart show of works by women
artists who toy with (and occasionally subvert) the
notion of the female gaze. Photographic material
dominates---including pieces by Marilyn Minter,
Cindy Sherman, Mickalene Thomas, and Carol
JOHN SPRINGER/CORBIS